Five Ways to Cut the Fat in Your AdWords Campaign

Your PPC campaign might be bringing in lots of leads, but upon a closer analysis, you might find that it’s actually unprofitable due to high cost-per-conversions. However, with a bit of tweaking and trimming, you can find some simple ways to conserve your Google AdWords budget and make it work far more efficiently.

Use your Search terms report to negate irrelevant keywords

Look into your Search terms report to find out what your users are typing into Google before they click on your ads. Not only will this show you new search terms with lots of potential for your ads, but it will also show you which keywords are irrelevant for the products or services you sell. When you come across these irrelevant keywords, you can add them as negative keywords, which means you won’t be spending money on displaying your ads to people who aren’t interested in what you sell.

Your Search terms report will also display your Match type column, which tells you how closely related the keywords in your ad are to the search terms that people are typing into Google (determined as exact match keyword, phrase match keyword and broad match keyword). The Match type column lets you see which match types are performing well for which keywords and searches, so you can refine those that aren’t performing as well.

Reduce irrelevant clicks by introducing location exclusions

Your ads’ location reports show you where your customers are searching from, and which areas they’re interested in. Here you’ll be able to see which locations aren’t converting as well for your ads, and you can add them as location exclusions. For example, if your ads are targeting New South Wales, there may be lots of non-converting clicks coming through from Newcastle. As such, you can exclude this location and conserve your budget.

It’s important to note that the default location setting is “People in, or who show interest in, my targeted location”. This means that someone searching outside of New South Wales, to use the example above, could still be shown your ads if they were to type in cafés in Sydney. To avoid paying for these kinds of unnecessary clicks, change your location settings to “People in my targeted location”.

It’s equally important for e-commerce businesses to exclude any areas within their target location that they don’t ship to or service. Not only is it a waste of your budget, but customers get frustrated when they show interest in a product, only to find out isn’t available to them.

Segment your campaign by device

As many of you are probably aware, people searching on their mobile devices are looking to make quick decisions – they’re probably searching on the go, and require a phone number or address. This is vastly different to the intentions of those who search on a desktop. These searchers are more likely to be making considered purchase decisions, or are still in the early research phase of their journey. As such, it’s important to segment your AdWords campaign by device.

By splitting your conversion data by device and using bid adjustments, you can alter how often your ads are showing on certain devices, depending on how well they’re performing. For example, if you’re experiencing a low number of converted clicks on mobile devices, you can add a negative bid adjustment.

Maximise your conversion rate by increasing bids and showing ads during best performing times

We all know that internet usage patterns change throughout the day. In between periods of high search volume (lunch breaks, in the evening after work or dinner), people are at work or engaging in other activities where they’re not searching on Google. As such, it pays to schedule your AdWords ads and adjust your bidding strategy to target the best performing times for your campaign.

Once you’ve accessed your hourly segment report in AdWords, it’s time to test out your schedule. Increase your bids during your best performing hours, and reduce them during quieter periods to make your AdWords campaign much more efficient. Once you’ve found the sweet spot, AdWords lets you create day-part bidding scripts and ad schedules.

Pause low-performing ads

This one is pretty straightforward. If you have ads that are underperforming (high CPA with little to no conversions), then pause them. You may also wish to pause certain ads due to their seasonality. If some of your products sell better in the summer, then it could be a waste of your ad spend to run them during the colder months. Pausing your ads as opposed to cancelling them entirely gives you the flexibility to enable them when you’re ready.

If you haven’t started up a PPC campaign just yet but are keen to find out more, then get in touch with us today on 1300 663 995. My team and I would be happy to help.